What are the easiest ways for a non-psychic to be able to cast all their spells after using greater possession to control enemies not suited to casting spells. (Like a rabbit, for example.)

Before casting the spell you could toss a spare component pouch on the ground and then after you possess the poor bunny rabbit it can use it's little buck teeth to rummage around in the pouch lying on the ground and pull out components.

Like the dog and the stick, animals don't have hands, but they can still grab stuff!

However, when trying to understand historical cultures which practiced slavery and never questioned it, then individuals within that society should be judged based on how they treated their slaves.
E.g. George Washington and the founding fathers, the Old Testament kings, citizens of the ancient Greek democracies, the medieval European aristocracy, the heroic figures of Asian cultures, etc.

To simply label them all "evil" because of a standard, historical cultural trait seems extremely arrogant. We have the benefit of our modern C21st culture and educations, they did not. So the measure must be how they behaved within their own cultural context.

And yes, this is relevant to Golarion, which has many pseudo-historical cultures -- from the Land of the Linnorm Kings (Viking), to Osirion (ancient Egypt), Qadira (Arabia-Persia), Vudra (India), Tian Xia (incl. Japan, China, Burma and others), etc.
Purging all of them of cultural elements we find distasteful to make them PC would remove something from the game -- the ability to use the fantasy culture to see the world as an historical-real-world-culture, warts and all, once did.

The aim is not to justify historical wrongs, but to try to capture or experience a very different and alien cultural perspective.

Slavery is morally wrong but evil might be too strong a word. Whether it is neutral or evil depends on the details.

Before the 1800s slavery was standard across the world through all of recorded history. Even the Old Testament contains instructions on how to treat slaves!

Freedom is a relatively modern notion. Peasants and serfs in most cultures were virtual slaves be they Chinese peasants, European serfs, ancient Egyptian commoners or African tribesmen ruled by the likes of Shaka Zulu.

In other words, an RPG that wants to simulate any real-world historical culture needs to interpret slavery through that lens. Morality (good, evil, neutral) can be defined in the cultural context by how the slave-owner treats their slaves.

Paizo knows this and they don’t want to compete with D&D 5 as they’ve said on numerous occasions.

They don't want to, of course, but they have to. Pathfinder has lost a lot of its player base to 5E, so PF2 is an attempt to claw back some of those players -- and also attract others who play that system.

Fantasy TTRPGs all compete with each other in the same market. More complex will be PF2's niche but aside from that, the game concept and themes are much the same.

"The human race" is a common phrase and the game had "Race: Human". So, from that point of reference it makes perfect sense.

Elves, dwarves, etc are not humans so elf race, dwarf race for "not members of the human race" are easily understandable terms.

Ancestry could be seen as worse than race as the term is most commonly used for humans of different ethnicities e.g. Swedish or Italian ancestry, or Tutsi or Tibetan ancestry.
In this day and age the term ancestry is closely associated with genealogy and ethnic origins of one's ancestors.

Homer's Iliad is the classical battle of champions on the battlefield scenario.
The ancient epic describes the battle of armies in broad details but only as a background to the heroic duels -- Hector vs Patroclus, Achilles vs Hector, Menelaus vs Paris, etc.

Basically the common soldiers do their thing in the background and don't interfere with their leaders' quest for glory battling the enemy leaders. And when a leader falls, their troops become demoralized and fall back or rout.

So emphasize the hero vs antihero fights with the flow of battle surrounding them being descriptive and responsive to results of the clash of champions.
The enemy champion is the head of the serpent, chop it off, and the body (his troops) flays around uselessly (are demoralized), until another enemy champion rallies them. Which in turn gives the PCs their next target.

You could set it up as a flowchart of options. So a description of the overview of the battlefield, PCs chose from several options and defeat a champion somewhere on the field, followed by another description of the overall flow of battle and how the enemy units respond, and then the PCs making another encounter choice, and so on.

The eldest of the good gods would have had priests in the time of ancient Azlant and supported their followers in the war against the serpentfolk who were humanity's nemesis at the time.

That said, I'm not sure which of the current gods were worshiped by the Azlanti. Shelyn and some of the empyreal lords, perhaps. Most of the others seem to be newer gods or closely associated with other continents (e.g. Desna the Varisian goddess, Torag the dwarf god, Sarenrae the Kalishite goddess).

It's surprising Golarion's non-evil cities don't man Paladins at the city gates like an airport scanner to detect evil people/things. Anyone who detects as evil then gets detained for questioning -- if they detect as evil surely they've done something bad!?
As someone above said they have to be at least 5HD to detect. So we are not talking about minor evils like the barmaid who wants to poison the rude PCs because she's evilly inclined. A level-5 evil NPC will surely have blood on his/her hands because to reach that level he's already done stuff!

The use of the term race in RPGs is generally positive. Humanity is defined as a single race and all humans are intrinsically equal irrespective of ethnicity.

As to elves and humans, yes, they can interbreed, but so can lions and tigers or horses and zebras or humans and neanderthals. So "race" functions as the non-sciency, fantasy description of the playable species, some of which are so closely related they can produce offspring (half-elves, half-orcs, etc.).

Rigid ideologies look better on paper than they could ever function in reality. Human nature ensures that things will go awry.

From Plato to St Augustine to Marx, every philosopher imagines a utopia which would only work in practice if all human beings were perfect.

Golarion's Mengkare seems to fit in the ranks of misguided philosopher. I imagine him as a LG philosopher dreaming of utopia, and sliding towards evil as he attempts to put his vision into practice -- rigorously enforcing it upon an imperfect populace who can't measure up to his philosophical standards.

Always happy for an excuse to talk about the Greeks! The passage about Circe is reproduced below. The word for her implement is rhabdos, which as far as I can tell might be closer to a short staff or a rod rather than a Harry-Potter-size wand.

You are right. I was thinking of ancient Athenian pottery where she is holding a mortar in one hand and waving her pestle "wand" at Odysseus' men in the other.

"Mortar and pestle" might not be accurate. You could also interpret it as a small bowl and a stick to stir the stew.

Interesting tidbit about the Odyssey. All the way between that and Disney's fairy godmother, the wand looked like a focus but it was never clearly specified. The authors didn't need to call out any rules, after all.

Circe's wand was the pestle of her mortar and pestle. She transformed Odysseus' men into beasts after they drank wine infused with her magical concoction by touching them with the instrument she used to mix it.

So it was really a focus. She was also also a minor goddess, so her pestle-wand was just a divine attribute much like Eros' love arrows or Poseidon's storm-raising trident.

Other famous mythical wands were Hermes' caduceus and Hypnos' branch of yew.

Should PF2 expand at the same rate as PF1? Or take things a bit slower?

I wonder how much of the PF1 expansion rulebooks will be translated in some form to the new system. It could be a good opportunity to sift the wheat from the chaff -- and future PF2 rulebooks could encapsulate the best of the best from the mountain of PF1 stuff.

A History of Ashes has the article "People of the Storval Plateau" all about the Shoanti.

Reading that whole "A History of Ashes" AP volume (if you don't intent on playing that adventure sometime) is a really good way to get a feel for the Shoanti as it describes an actual tribe, it's history and how the PCs interact with them.

So if the you want to step into the Shoanti world read the adventure! Unlike most adventures it's heavily focused exploring a culture which is great if you're looking for inspiration on building a character from that culture.

Expanding on the idea of Sense Motive, have the interrogator(s) talk about known facts (even if just names) relevant to what the interrogation is about, and look carefully for subtle reactions by the subject.

Would that work? Sense Motive is usually opposed by Deception. However, if the subject refuses to speak (poker face), then there isn't much to work with.

Muminofrah of Sothis, the fat Cleopatra-wannabee from the Mummy's Mask AP who sails into port on her golden barge was amusing and memorable. She was also a rarity, a major NPC who was neither an ally nor enemy of the PCs.

Torture is evil but threatening to torture someone using the Bluff (lying) instead of the Intimidation (intended threat) skill would not be.
In the campaign world the interrogated person would know:
(1) In his world people do torture people;
(2) Adventurers come in all shades of good and evil and the captured NPC doesn't necessarily know which they are.

On the other hand, it depends on the individual. As history has shown, some people don't crack under torture. So threatening torture will definitely not work on a particular personality type, and others might be so confident in their ability to resist torture (even if they would actually crack if tortured) that they will automatically brush off the threat.

So, aside from using magic, you can assume that some interrogations will never work no matter what method you use. That is perfectly fine, because if that is built into the scenario, then the PCs will have other ways to further the plot.

There are also non-interrogation techniques you can use to learn certain things. Such as letting the prisoner believe he has managed to escape on his own (loose knots binding him), and then tracking him back to the secret lair.
If you feed him false information before hand, a sneaky character might be able to follow close behind, and eavesdrop on the NPCs resulting conversation with an ally to learn relevant intel.

Paizo has their own store where their books are sold, while 5E links to sites like Amazon to buy theirs. I'm not saying Pathfinder is outselling 5E, obviously. But those Amazon statistics just aren't meaningful in this context.

The Pathfinder CRB is listed in Amazon's top 100 so, despite being such an old game, even now it's still attracting brand new customers.

As for the rest of Paizo's products, I think the sheer breadth of their catalogue dilutes sales per product.
So people might be buying lots and lots of Pathfinder, but because there is so much to choose from the sales are not concentrated enough in any one product to register in something like an Amazon top 100 list.

5E by comparison has relatively few products, so sales are more heavily concentrated on each of those.

Medieval Christian priests dunked people in water to simulate drowning until they confessed. Waterboarding isn't torture and is compatible with good religions (at least by the Medieval definition of "good").

Compared with everyday Medieval stuff it was pretty mild -- at the end of my street there is an old iron tub hanging from the side of the old weights-house which they used to use to boil corrupt merchants (those using false weights) to death in oil.
Europeans were a grisly lot!

The point though is that an NPC might be able to convince a Character that wrong is right, but they shouldn't be able to convince a player. If you a GM think that you may have done so (your NPC argued so convincing for a certain behavior that your players now believe that you as the GM believe that that behavior is moral) then you need to correct the players misunderstanding.

Yes, it's rather tricky in this situation drawing the line between DM/Player and NPC/PC.

On the level of PC personality though, I think it is best for the player to make the call rather than a random roll of a die because players should feel that they have agency over their character's decisions and how to roleplay them.

For a player the Sense Motive skill should be used to discern (or gain hints as to) an NPC honesty, motives, moods, etc., rather than determine how the PC should react to them which is the player's prerogative.

In other words, a player shouldn't have to use the Sense Motive skill to decide how his character reacts to what an NPC is telling him. The skill should be used to provide the player with clues to help him decide how to roleplay the encounter and not how to ultimately decide it.

Bard
By adding a flourish, you can make your compositions last longer. You
learn the lingering composition composition power (see page 235), which you can
cast at a cost of 1 Spell Point. Increase your Spell Point pool by 2.

That's a very self-indulgent example of a rule. Basically Jargon Item 1 makes Jargon Item 2 longer. You learn Jargon Item 3 which you can use with Jargon Item 4 increasing Jargon Item 4 by 2.

For the lay person, trying to visualize this is hard. Who knows what the bard is doing or trying to accomplish in-game. Esoteric mathematical stuff in his head, I guess.

By comparison, although PF1 and various iterations of D&D had their jargon, they used natural language and you could get the gist of most things by just reading it without understanding all of the underlying rules.

A game that some people love and others hate still has a passionate audience.
A game that everyone finds mediocre ... well, one's free time is limited, and there are lots of other games/pastimes to choose from ...

A gaming company plays by entertainment industry rules. It competes with every other entertainment for our attention.

idk but it makes sense that ranged attacks (regardless of what it is) require good aiming. Now what attribute/skill is best for aiming is a difficult question, in which pf1 decided its Dex (unless something changes it).

I do agree its kind of odd that a Wizard needs to max out dex to hit better. But isn't that why they also targeted TAC in PF1? So even with suboptimal Dex they could hit most targets baring a horrible roll?

Not necessarily.

Dexterity assumes the magic-user has to aim his spell by pointing his finger accurately at the target.

Using his/her mind to aim a spell is also valid. To do that Int-Wis-Char could represent the mental finesse required to hit a moving target.

In other words, having a higher mental attribute could indicate more precision. You aim with eye+mind instead of eye+hand.

That's not what Pathfinder is or should be. Pathfinder is supposed to be the indie small-brew to WotC's mass-market D&D.

I admit I haven't read the playtest but have read a few of Paizo's preview blogs.

My first impression was that it was all very dry and heavy with abstract jargon.

Although that's fine for a technical manual, mathematics textbook or behind-the-scenes coding for a computer game, that cold, clinical feel is something of a turn-off for an RPG which is essentially a game of the imagination.

Can someone who has read the playtest tell me if my impression is correct?

Of course, it's only a playtest, so aside from fixing rules issues perhaps they will fluff it up in a way that makes it more fun to read and inspiring.

In other words, 7 score, well-built rules but dull, 10 score, well-built rules and exciting. So, if you want people to buy it (beyond those enthusiastic enough to playtest it), reading it shouldn't be chore.

I don't know if they are still canon, but there are also the Gigas, humanoid giants native to some of the outer planes like Hell. In the Council of Thieves bestiary they are described as an intermediary race linking Titans and material plane giants.

For example: if someone villain has secretly been trying to tempt them into becoming evil and you let the character do a check to see if the realize "Oh (redacted), he's turning me evil".

That would be Sense Motive opposed by the villian's Bluff for an NPC. However, in the case of a PC, it would be better to just roleplay it rather than roll dice.

Typically PCs aren't subject to Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate skills performed on them by NPCs. There is no roleplay to that -- your PC's personality would be reduced to the level of an automaton controlled by the dice rolls if you went that route.

Instead emphasize the ROLEPLAY in RPG! To do that think about how your character might naturally come to realize he is being manipulated. It doesn't need to be a sudden revelation but, in a storytelling fashion, have the PC express doubts, ask other PCs for advice, etc.

Go4TheEyesBoo’s examples of characters and how you build them just perplexes me. If your character concept requires 3 classes and as many or more archetypes and you need more than one line on the character sheet to write it then you should be throwing D20 out the window and using any one of the countless systems that have a “cherry picking” format instead of classes and levels.

I suspect the difference is creatively connecting and overlaying different-sized pieces rather than just fitting together a mound of equal-sized blocks.

I don't find those convoluted characters particularly attractive but I can appreciate how people might enjoy using their creativity to construct them. It requires some artistry which you would lose with just the raw building blocks.

In neither case did the WotC face a direct competitor staring at them with a mean, lean, well-designed game that has better brand recognition, sound marketing and a massive player base. Every time TSR/WotC did change edition, it was unopposed by any life-threatening direct competition.

When Paizo tweaked 3.5 into 3.66, it was facing a direct competition who just did shoot itself in their foot so hard that they almost fell out of the market.
But sadly for Paizo, while you can beat good brand recognition coupled with a crap product that's marketed in a shoddy way, you just can't do the same against good brand recognition, great product and marketing that's on the verge of making RPGs a socially acceptable pastime.

I'm late to the party, but 1000x this. Not to take anything away from Paizo's execution, but Pathfinder as we know it today simply would not exist without WotC driving D&D into a ditch.

PF1 was indeed a very successful niche created in the wake of 4E.

Similarly PF2 is their answer to 5E. The goal is probably threefold -- to retain existing PF players, to draw back lapsed PF players, and to attract brand new players looking for a more complex alternative to a thematically similar game.

That is a sensible policy and they have built up a good reputation over the years for quality products (especially the AP line).

PF1 (w/ 10 yrs of splat books) vs 5E was obviously no longer a viable option. To draw back former PF players and attract new ones, they needed to fix the issues that made PF1 less attractive and lower the entry bar for new players.

Admittedly that is a tough combo for Paizo to pull off, as existing, lapsed and new players have very different needs/wants. The playtest itself also would have suffered from self-selection bias -- dominated by existing PF players rather than the expanded market of potential players they want to target.

The mountain of books I already have on Golarion would give Encyclopedia Britannica a run for its money!

I'm not saying they should abandon it entirely, as there are some fascinating aspects that have not been explored.
But at the same time rehashing much of the same stuff over and over again does get a bit stale.

Yes, splitting your customer base with multiple campaign settings is one issue, but boring you customer base is another.
I really enjoyed Golarion for the first 6 yrs but then switched off and started looking elsewhere for something new and fresh (the same applied to FR before that).

It would probably be good for the developers as well, since they must feel a bit hemmed in by the confines of the current setting after all this time. And developer enthusiasm breeds player enthusiasm.

The Starstone Cathedral is also described in Mythic Adventures although it is rather underwhelming.

After completing a personalized Test, you appear before a panel of all the gods for an interview. If you pass the interview, one of the gods sponsors you, granting you a mythic rank.

Then you go out, do stuff and level up (using the Mythic Adventures rulebook) and perhaps one day become a real god. E.g. Iomedae was just a mythic hero NPC for a long time after the test (immortal & able to grant some spells), until Aroden died and she received her promotion.

So to succeed at the Test: (1) practice your interview skills! and (2) suck up to someone on the panel!

What if; Disabling traps, locks, and mechanical devices went into Engineering (as it does in Starfinder) and shoplifting and pickpocketing was rolled into Stealth? (Since doing those last two involves not being seen doing them.)

You know, that would be a lot simpler.

Just call the old Disable Device skill, Disable Device in PF2 like before.

And roll the old Sleight of Hand skill into PF2 Stealth. It was a corner case type of skill anyway and it fits fine with Stealth -- surreptitiously picking pockets, hiding weapons on your person, and so on, all stealthy stuff.

Yes, thievery has obvious negative connotations that all of its uses don’t deserve but it gets across what it does pretty well.

The point is that Thievery is but one use for the skill set.

In practice, if you look at all of the APs and modules, the skill is almost never used for anything approximating theft.

Rather, it is a standard dungeoneering skill used to circumvent or manipulate the mechanisms of a site (locks, traps, machines, etc.) -- and the site itself is usually the lair of a villian or monster and/or a long abandoned ruin.

Sure, NPC thieves use this skill for their profession, but adventurers generally use it for something else entirely.
So a name that captures the Indiana Jones and Lara Croft and MacGyver type skill use would be better.